Do you need 41 megapixels? Our Nokia Lumia 1020 camera review

Connect smartphone reviews are written with the needs of photographers in mind. We focus on camera features, performance and image quality.

Nokia Lumia 1020 Product Images

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A 41-megapixel camera on a phone. You’d assume that was a typo if Nokia hadn’t already unveiled the 41-megapixel 808 Pureview last year, a technological tour-de-force that escaped mainstream appeal thanks largely to its orphaned Symbian operating system. With the Lumia 1020, Nokia has brought the innovative downsampling approach it debuted in the 808’s camera to a Windows Phone with a more relevant OS.

While zoom lenses that span from wide-angle to telescopic have been the norm on dedicated digicams for years, zoom optics remain impractical for thin phones (they exist only on the occasional camera-with-a-phone-in-it like Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Zoom). The “digital zoom” feature on most phones is generally a disappointing alternative.

Nokia changed that with the 808’s downsampling zoom, and the 1020 combines that technology with the optical image stabilization introduced in Nokia’s Lumia 920 that allows significantly better image quality in low light. On paper, that hardware combination makes the 1020 stand out impressively in a field in which incremental resolution bumps and often-gimmicky software features have been the name of the game. But do these great ideas translate into a great photographic experience? We put the Lumia 1020 through its picture-making paces to find out how its impressive imaging technology works in the real world.

Key Photographic / Video Specifications

41-megapixel 1/1.5-inch backside-illuminated sensor

F2.2 lens

25mm equivalent focal length in 16:9, 27mm in 4:3

2.7x downsampling digital zoom

Optical image stabilization

Manual shutter speed, focus, and ISO control

Xenon flash

1080p 30fps video recording

1.2MP F2.4 front camera

Panorama mode

Nokia Smart Camera mode

Nokia Pro Cam mode

Other Specifications

1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor

Windows Phone 8

4.5-inch 1280x768 (334 ppi) AMOLED display

2GB RAM

32GB storage

NFC

2000MAh battery, non-removable

Our 11-page review

We've considered every aspect of the Nokia Lumia 1020, with the photographer in mind. We examined the user interface of the native camera app and its special features. We experimented with the camera's performance when taking stills and video, and had a play with the device's many special feature modes. Click any of the links below for more information of specific functions and continue to our conclusion for a final summary of our findings.

Comments

Vote now for a new Nokia 1030 on Android complete with 41MP PureView camera!

Nearly eighteen months after release and the Nokia 1020 is still the best smartphone camera available. Its sales were always going to be limited with it being based on Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. Delivering an updated version on Android would be a certain success and there is a HUGE hole in the market.

Vote now (on the link below) and tell Microsoft what we really want for Christmas!

I purchased the 1020 at launch and I am a little disappointed in nokia a bit. The time delay in taking shots as well as the time delay between shots MUST be fixed soon. I mean, really? They have had enough time to update the software and fix this. I bought the phone purely on the premise of the camera. I never owned a window phone, although it was too easy to figure out. I hope the next phone that features the 55 mega pixel camera will have better functionality as far as a professional photographer is concerned, like myself. I will give nokia another year if they are going to fix these issues. Oh by the way, in my family, we have the latest android and ois phones and I will tell you this fact. All can do a better job at the delay issues I mentioned up above. However, the 1020 in the hands of professionals such as myself, can take photos, albeit one at a time, better than the canon dlsr's of 18 megapixels. Just food for thought, thats all.

1) Just after 4 months, my Nokia Lumia 1020 stalled and I had to bring it to the merchant (this is MediaMarkt in Switzerland). The merchant told me, that they had quite a number of other customers with the same or similar problem and that they have to send it for repair. After getting back my Lumia 1020, I had to re-initialize it from scratch. That is quite a lot of very unpleasant work.

2) Neither the merchant nor the repair organization were willing to give me a Nokia Phone Number that I could use to inquire about the problem or could complain.

3) In Addition the colors of landscape photos are horrible. Especially the Greens. I do not understand why the Lumia gets nice reviews for its "photo quality".... The Colors of the photos should be part of the photo-quality criterias.

I downsized 1020 file to 13mp and S4 still stumps all over that image. Very disappointing. What is the point of packing all those pixel, I dont get it. Why not just make excellent 8 or 10 MP sensor with superior JPG engine, that stumps over all other cameras. I have 1520 and the camera produces rather disappointing results as well.

Yours must be broken. Apart from the usualy yellow cast on Sony BSI sensors of that era, the L1020 at pureview resolution creates very good pictures (in Pureview mode). Especially with Nokia's recent updates (Nokia black). Nonetheles IMHO for still photography the 808Pureview is MUCH better. Not in the least because it has more PureView modes. Lumia 1020 has only a 5MP pureview mode while the 808PV has 5MP (standard), 8MP and 3MP pureview modes. The lowest mode also has the largest zoom-factor as well. It also has a Neutral Density (ND8) filter (about 3F stops) and ISO50. It also has 3 programmable presets in creative mode to store to 3 most used settings. IMHO Connect.Dpreview should use the 808PV as the standard to compare all the others (including the L1020). In fact I've replaced my Nikon D40 with this "phone". (Though I am thinking of getting a 2nd hand D7000 though)

No it is not. The 808PV doesn't really zoom, it creates a center crop from the sensors' full 41MP data. Other phones at that time had 8MP unzoomed data that got blown up (interpolated) upto the wanted zoom-level. You could do that as well in photoshop. In fact if you take a 41MP picture from the 808PV and center crop a 8MP part of it in photoshop then you do exactly as what the 808PV does for you when "zooming". The advantage of the 808PV is NOT its zoom but it's downsampled images at 3MP, 5MP and 8MP respectively. As soon as you start using zoom that advantage disappears (though you still got "some" pureview-quality when not zoomed to the full).

I just purchased phone and there is a very noticeable internal lens flaw, that shows up on all photographs. The camera is amazing when it worked properly, low light is fantastic, (you forget it is a phone) but caution.. Look for lens flaw (take pictures in different lighting situations) and KNOW your carriers replacement policy, as my carrier wants to give me a refurb unit only 18 days after purchase on a Manufactures Defect.

You and DXO people have really to find an agreement. From one side you are ready to make free advertisements by publishing a set of average photos given to you by Nokia. From the other side DXO people puts the phone down in comparison with the much less photo oriented samsung S4.

"DxOMark found the Nokia Lumia 1020 Apple iPhone 5s' exposure and color reproduction to be good." - someone needs to proofread this again. there are also lines where it mentions iPhone instead of 1020. the autofocus section even has a bullet point with no text

How can they rate a iPone5s with sub-par/mediocre sensor higher than this one. Only an idiot will believe in this DXOcrap mark. Do a side-by-side comparison between the two and post here the results (not just a useless numbers) and you will see that this camera will stomp iPhone5s in any department.

Is there really no way of adjusting contrast, sharpening and color saturation? That is a big fail IMO. I use the 808 a lot, and when I use the full resolution, I have those turned all the way or almost all the way down.

I don't understand why they would do this, even in the Pro Cam app? It's very strange.

You can edit it with Nokia's Creative Studio app, and it's quite nice, not to mention there are tons of other apps which get integrated into the "edit" option so it's pretty quick to get to each app as well.

I use a wifi card in either a RX-100 (1" sensor) or my Nikon DSLR.Jpeg pictures are instantly loaded to my smartphone. Don't see much need for processing zoom this way, but, its fascinating what can and will be done.I'll wait for 2nd generation.

Why not make improvements on the shot-to-shot times (easy when 5 to 8MP is plenty of info to use. How much resolution does your monitor display? Lets be honest, how often do you print? When you do, how often above 5x7 do you go? 10 years ago I used a Nikon 5700 which has 5MP to make great 13x19 photos via a Canon S9000 printer. The prints are still on the wall today and I always get comments. The MP marketing is winning it seems.

How about a faster lens, say f/1.8 and faster shutter speeds? Also, make it a sharper lens, ie; in the corners.

"Why not make improvements on the shot-to-shot times (easy when 5 to 8MP is plenty of info to use."Because the L1020 uses a software algorithm to process the sensor data into a JPEG (or whatever). The 808PV has a dedicated DSP that does all the math instantly and has a terrific shot-to-shot time. It's obvious that the Lumia 1020's multicore CPU isn't fast enough to handle that amount of data. A bad move from Nokia which they did to make the device thinner. They should have used the SAME albeit thicker sensor from the 808PV and bloted OIS on that.

There is a wide spread consensus that the offered price was far too low, emphasizing Stephen Elop's questionable role in this transaction.We'll see how the EGM shall cast their vote; the deal is anything but certain.

They did not waste money actually, they have 3 percent of the market share in the United States however that is not what they are concerned with. They are going overseas to India where there are over 900 million people who own cell phones and only 6 million of them have smart phones. Nokia has ( or had since they're part of Microsoft now) a significant market share over there. Most of the people there have basic phones that are of poor quality, Microsoft is about to break into that huge market.

I don't think Microsoft wasted money on Nokia (IMHO Nokia is the big loser of the deal) either, but having 3,5% of market share the first half of 2013 and AT&T holding Nokia's sales (AT&T IS Nokia's exclusive partner in U.S), Microsoft will need some more manufacturers to spread the O.S(in U.S), or else wp8 don't stand much chance . Microsoft wanted a hardware store and got it (Nokia) for 5+ billion euros . What i think Microsoft is trying to do (among others) (with this purchase) is to establish herself in European market dragging American market share. In India is settled one of Nokia's biggest production lines (in Chennai) (being very popular as well) but even that couldn't hold the Nokia's World Wide market share fall from 23,4% 4Q 2011 to 18% 4Q 2012

Yes true, but also we have to consider the imaging processor. Although the 808 does have the larger sensor higher signal to noise, alot of the final image output is heavily dependent on the image processor. Since the 1020 has a software image processor, there is hope that a firmware update may fix alot of the issues of noise, and poor texture detail at low ISO

actually I just want a 808PV nothing less. Nokia should have kept selling the 808PV alongside the Lumia 1020. They could have sell it as a cheaper alternative with smaller screen (and better suited to still photography) and shut-up about it running Symbian. Just sell it as a camera-phone instead of a "smartphone". I personally don't want anythong more. Just another 808PV if mine breaks down.

I've been reading all these 808 vs. 1020 comments and it's hilarious to see all the 808 owners (including those who never even owned one) refuse to let their old phone die.I viewed the photo samples shot by the new 1020 and to be honest, I don't understand what the 808 supporters are crying about. I'm a die-hard iPhone user (since iPhone1) and the 1020 sample images are stunning. But then I have a high-resolution 27-inch monitor w/ a professional graphics board. Maybe I'm seeing something the 1020 bashers are not?

Anyway, this all sounds like the old Laser Disc vs. DVD Which-format-is-better Wars. In this case, the 808 supporters are like the LaserDisc fanatics who simply refuses to accept the fact that DVD technology has surpassed their beloved LD (i.e., Nokia 808). LoL. And these people still stubbornly insist their old laser discs are still much better than even Blu-Ray.Time to throw away the old Nokia phones. What you perceive as something better is just that -- perception.

Please check other sites which have compared the 808 to the 1020, then you will understand what are we talking about, especially if you view side by side comparisons on your 27" monitor.

Comparing the 808 to the 1020 is a close match, where the 808 will come out on top in bright light and low ISO scenes, and the 1020 will be on top for high ISO scenes. Sadly no iPhone to date gets even close to the performance of the 1020 or the 808.

I do not think your analogy of the laser disc and the DVD is a good correlation to the 808 and the 1020. I would say comparing beta max and VHS as being a better correlation, where the 808 is the beta max, and the 1020 is VHS. The 808 does have better pixel IQ, natural edge and textural detail at low ISO. The 1020 is good, but not as good as the 808, but has much better marketing, plus has extra new technological features like optical stabilization, up to date OS, and slimmer modern formfactor.

Disappointed in 1020, I had high hopes that Nokia would improve or at least properly port 808's camera into a WP platform. But instead they put a smaller sensor and applied their awful WP algorithms. Not to mention no microSD card slot.

1020 does not produce pleasant images. And that's the bottom line. Its images look very over processed, too sharpened, too grainy and noisy.

Compared to 808, it's like something like a turbo 4 cylinder vs a naturally aspirated V8. 1020 is trying too hard and using all the tricks to look comparable to 808, but it does not compare.

Symbian is a dead platform, but a fact is a fact, there is a phone out there that beats 1020 in IQ, and no matter how many excuses you make, it'll stay a fact. And knowing that, it's hard to shell out €700+ for a camera centric phone knowing it's not the absolute best there is. 1020 feels like a compromise.

As for WP, it's better than Symbian but it would still be a OS(iOS as main) for me, so makes no difference.

Usability of WP on Nokia plattform is handsdown best for everyday. All apps are available. Not too much junk clogging the marketplace. Add great pic quality since the 920 .Sharing and social media support is way better than ios/and. Charging without plugin is an absolute killer feature. Changing to any iphone would be a massive downgrade.

"hat the heck are you talking about?!?! Looks pretty great to me... you must have some standards so high that no one can reach them."

Yeah his standards is the same as mine: Nokia 808 Pureview or as Nokia called it "pureview pro".

But you're right. In the past the Lumia 1020 had that nasty yellow cast but after the latest Nokia Black update colour cast has improved a lot. Nearly to the 808PV's level. Finally after almost a full year they got that L1020's sensor under control. Its about time they did. The Samsung Galaxy K Zoom is coming. ;-)

pixel count doesn't necessarily affect image quality but high pixel count is a better way than an optical extender for the reach (an optical solution won't be better if it doesn't come with larger aperture).

agree, but lets give Nokia a chance to update their software image processor, which hopefully will resolve this not so clean 5mp pureview images. Also lets hope Nokia gives the option to "Turn Off" the saturation and edge sharpening.

Charlie you clearly never saw an 8MP pureview image from an 808PV. I have a few Flickr photos with some comparisions between a few phones and a 808PV. Including a Jolla phone and a Samsung Galaxy S 3 (which has a typical 8MP sensor of that time).

Actually, Nokia's hardware designs, even for those with sealed batteries, allow for maintenance access without the risk of physical deformation of materials (i.e. HTC One's sealed/pressed construction). My venerable N8's battery is also sealed. I can easily change it out in 2 minutes with a T5 torx and the loosening of 2 small screws.

Then you misunderstood the purpose of oversampling. At 5MP, the virtual pixels are 3.2 microns in size. As you zoom, those virtual pixels get smaller until, at full zoom, the virtual pixels are the same size as the physical pixels. You can set the phone to only take the default 5MP photos, which really benefit from the oversampling. As well, the shots are much quicker when full rez is deselected. To note, the 5MP photos take up a frugal ~1MB of storage each. A 10MP sensor without oversampling would not be capable of loss-less zoom. In other words, at full zoom (~3x) the resolution would be significantly reduced due to conventional cropping.

The problem with mobile phone cameras is they are almost all set on auto. I have used my wife's 41mp. mob phone and found even the focus to be a little 'wild'.They are not for me. I'll stick to the A77 thanks.

the depth of field have absolutely nothing to do with pixel size because the definition of which refers to the frame, not pixel (often circle of confusion = 1/1300 of diagonal but other numbers can also be used depending on the application, not the camera).

@yabokkie If I am not wrong, the question was about why ozgoldman wifes phone has issues with Autofocus. The title 41mp mob refers to probably the Nokia 808 or the 1020, as both these have 41MP. Some people refer to the 808 or the 1020 as just "41mp phone"

Funny coming from a guy who was constantly claiming "less pixels are better" Now you understand that they are not. You can downsample larger MP images and get same or better image quality. This isn't rocket science.

That's funny how people call the 1020 IQ garbage when it's in the top 3. Sorry but, just because video brings the score down, the tests show it just below the 808. So it's the 2nd best IQ phone tied with s4...

but you call it garbage. I guess we should just throw out all those tests then lol

You can easily check this by checking out the double-density ISO 12233 chart parts in the center. They certainly show the lens being able to resolve around 21 Mpixels.

Full 38 Mpixel images (DPReview shoots 4:3 for their mobile studio scene), the horizontal lines can be counted up to around 41, which means the effective resolution is around 38*4100/7136 = 21 Mpixels. (Somewhat less than the maximal theoretical resolution of 38 Mpixel but still excellent for Bayer sensor and a lens this small.). A crop showing this:

5 Mpixel images, on the other hand, have clearly less detail than those of even the iPhone 5, let alone the GS4. (Also note how bad the Nokia 920 is.) The latter two simply deliver better effective resolution, at least with “artificial” subjects likre rescharts:

Now, this seeming inferiority can be caused by the strong oversharpening, resulting in false detail in sections over the Nyquist frequency? It must be. The false detail seems to be the single most important problem with Nokia’s algorithm. (More natural scenes are rendered far better; according to DPReview (too), they are better than those of even the GS4.) They should use some kind of digital high-pass filter not to let false detail ruin areas like these. (There shouldn’t be any detail over the Nyquist frequency, that is, with an 5 Mpixel 4:3 (=2592*1936) image, over the 25.9 mark. Everything you see there is false detail.)

Note that the false detail present in the daylight shot (see previous crop) is much less pronounced here. That is, you’re unlikely to see false detail on low-light 5 Mpixel shots.

NOTE: as far as a resolution comparison to the 808 is concerned, unfortunately, these results can’t really be compared to that of the 808 review as the latter only uses DPReview’s default scene (see dpreview.com/articles/8083837371/review-nokia-808-pureview/3 ) but not the usual resolution chart test.

In the not-very-good 5 Mpixel mode, yes. In the full-res one, definitely not. You will NOT show me ANY compact with such detail level and true resolution in 80% of the 16:9 frame. After all, the true (!!) resolution of this thing, as I've shown above, is around 21 Mpixels. Not even the RX100 (Mk II) is capable of that...

you focus too much on resolution. It's important yes but from a phone you're likely to share your pics online and for that purpose 5MP is more than enough. However, thanks to its clever downsampling algorithms and very efficient OIS it is very good in low light. You can still take pictures when all you get on some other phones is a pixelated mess.

The original poster asked about it - this is why I've elaborated on it :)

"It's important yes but from a phone you're likely to share your pics online and for that purpose 5MP is more than enough. "

Yup, but, still, the dowsampling algorithm seems to be a bit weak because it introduces false detail. At least under good light. That is, if one wants to have the best possible results, he / she must allow for saving the original-Mpixel image and do the downsampling on the desktop (or another downsampler) which uses a superior downsampler algorithm.

You may want to see the results from comparing the Sony RX100 vs RX100 ii using "imaging resources" image comparitor. I have noticed that the false detail you mention seems to creep in on the RX100 ii especially on high contrast edges. To me the older RX100 image pixel IQ is better. This can be no coincidence that the RX100 ii uses a 1" BSI sensor and the older RX100 uses a 1" FSI sensor.

The only way to understand the 1020's 41mp is by carefully reading DP and other technical reviews, and for all explanations and image comparisons, it makes a lot of sense. Great 5mp pictures, "a digital zoom that does not suck", image stabilization, and great low-light pictures make this cam-phone the best one. And unless there is an iOS or Android app exclusive of these OS you cannot live with, WP8 is an excellent alternative. I will definitively get one once the unlocked versions drop in price.

Any day now when your Fovean learns to make phone calls, etc. If there even a WiFi based web browser? e-mail? Twitter? Facebook? Any clone version would be fine . It doesn't have to be an original version as long as it works! SMS? Something?!No?THEN I wish that someone would put a larger lens and Foveon sensor on a phone!!

@ By FoveonPureView : Not exactly a Foveon sensor but from what I've seen that soon to be available Galaxy K Zoom looks very interesting. IMHO a better OS than WP and a better camera on it too (with 10x optical zoom). ANd from what I've seen the price isn't bad either, about 500 euros.

If the question is, if you need 41mp on your phone, the answer is NO !! as long as you have better lens, (than the one this Nokia is equipped with), as for the low light conditions bad is good only when compared to the worst

I have 808 and I tried to test it, seems to have 1-2sec lag between shots and startup time 3sec. It varies a little sometimes. Maybe it is faster because 808 has dedicated signal processor for images and 1020 uses it's "normal" processor.Here is it's review: http://connect.dpreview.com/post/4388245494/nokia-808-pureview-review

Yes, the 808 sports a dedicated scaling chip for the camera. It also is defaulted to 5MP only. If you select full resolution, it also takes longer to process. IMO, the 1020 should've been set to 5MP only (as default) and have left the dual mode with additional full rez as an option. I think this would've avoided the issue for the most part. However, the "New Way to Zoom" marketing campaign heavily promoted the post shot zoom capability. I suspect the engineers were forced to keep the default in dual mode for this reason.

But not as long as the Lumia 1020. The shot to shot time on the current firmware is too long. Hopefully, they can improve it. Also the 808 has te option to capture 8MP pictures which I think is the perfect size.

Compare the Lumia 1020 with 5Mpx-only mode to Nokia 808 in the defaul=same mode.Then in 38Mpx-only both. Compare...There you go!It could be that the either the flash or the memory channels are too slow even for the modern phone-class Chips to save the images fast enough.Lumia 1020 by default takes two pictures and does CPU-based downsampling to 5Mpx and then saves both to the internal Flash. More work, more time needed.

"Don't bother to buy one, chromatic aberration at the corners, doesn't get better with the O.S"

Oh no, you again... :)

Let me point out again and again that the lens softness only affects the left/rightmost 10% of the frame. The remaining 80% is tack sharp.

That is, don't spread false propaganda. While the 1020 has its share of problems, it's in no way a bad camera. IQ-wise, particularly if you stick with the hi-res mode and do any kind of downsampling on the desktop, it's certainly MUCH better than any else smartphone camera out there.

The lens does NOT fit the camera and that is OBVIOUS , it is not only 10% but a lot more (more than 20%) (and you can check that from the photos taking for the national geographic -look at the color fall off at the hat of dude in the picture-)Do you know what is false propaganda in here ? All the commentators that joined today (31 of August ) to comment today the superiority of this phone ( that is typical Nokian fan guided tactics, that is what happened last year with 808 pureview as well, That is Propaganda )About this phone-camera is good compared among phones and thats all, (some stupids last year hastened to compare it to Canon 5D or even Nikon D800), as for what you pay and what you get you better buy yourself a 300$ point and shoot camera and you'll get better Image Quality than this ...... thing !!!!!

"The lens does NOT fit the camera and that is OBVIOUS , it is not only 10% but a lot more (more than 20%) (and you can check that from the photos taking for the national geographic -look at the color fall off at the hat of dude in the picture-)"

The picture at http://connect.dpreview.com/files/p/cms_posts/5588168824/natgeo3.jpg is almost unusable to properly evaluate lens sharpness as it's marred by NR. I'd say the color smear is caused by the NR and in no way the lens blur in the left/rightmost 10% of the frame.

I've evaluated a lot of, technically, far better images with far lower NR. All of them exhibited the same lens blur in the left/rightmost 10% of the frame in 16:9 and 6% in 4:3 mode.

Feel free to show me images that can really be evaluated (aren't marred by NR this bad) and show a much larger region of serious lens blur. (Except for early samples, of course.)

"All the commentators that joined today (31 of August ) to comment today the superiority of this phone ( that is typical Nokian fan guided tactics, that is what happened last year with 808 pureview as well, That is Propaganda )About this phone-camera is good compared among phones and thats all, (some stupids last year hastened to compare it to Canon 5D or even Nikon D800), as for what you pay and what you get you better buy yourself a 300$ point and shoot camera and you'll get better Image Quality than this ...... thing !!!!! "

Well, I haven't noticed an onslaught of new, just-registered people praising the 1020. Actually, we "oldtimers" (also, many of us 808 users) even stated we won't upgrade to the 1020 because of the deficiencies in the IQ. I stated it too below. And I even stated the iPhone 5 has, for a 1/3" 8 Mpixel sensor, good IQ.

-"I'd say the color smear is caused by the NR and in no way the lens blur in the left/rightmost 10% of the frame."-

I didn't know that NR smears color form ISO 100 (this must be a world wide novelty for Lumia 1020 ).And if you "haven't noticed an onslaught of new, just-registered people praising the 1020" then check again !!!

I didn't say it is Nokia's propaganda but NOKIA'S FANS propaganda. As for the you (the 808 users) i think it would be good to upgrade to 1020, cause you were the ones saying that you 'd buy that phone not to curry a photo camera with you , yes but with that phone ,you'll need to curry one more phone (that can work properly) :-)

Lumia 1020 (in my humble opinion ) is good for a phone the lens is "let's say a poor choice" but compared with the competition the 41mp sensor is making much fuss about nothing special

"the natgeo3 photo has f2,2 ISO100 and shutter speed 1/170 so the NR theory is nice for the ignorant"

You mean the image at http://connect.dpreview.com/files/p/cms_posts/5588168824/natgeo3.jpg is suffering from lens softness and not NR-induced blurring??? You certainly don't know what you're speaking about...

Man, we're talking about a sensor with 1.12 micron photodiodes.... show me a SINGLE camera that isn't noisy at base ISO with such small photodiodes... you won't show me any.

NR at shutter speed 1/170, ISO 100 ?????? Mate !! you (the Nokian fans) were talking about the superiority of the 41mp and the oversampling giving low light better noise reduction and now you tell me about NR color smearing ? and that the photodiode is 1,12 μm big ?

In every photo taken from that phone the light distortion is OBVIOUS at least 2/3 off centerlook at the comparison chart at the corners and compare it with samsung s4 ( which is the sharper of the category )

"NR at shutter speed 1/170, ISO 100 ??????Mate !! you (the Nokian fans) were talking about the superiority of the 41mp and the oversampling giving low light better noise reduction and now you tell me about NR color smearing ?"

Albeit I know it's pretty useless to argue with you, but...

1, I'm speaking of (and have linked to) the full-res 34 Mpixel image, not the downsampled one. Downsampled ones are better, as has the DPReview folks also pointed out here in the comment section.

2, again, show me ANY 1.12 um sensor that isn't nosy at even base ISO.

CA may not be a deal breaker but corner softness may be. The Fuji F30 was a very capable camera at it's time and sported one of the best signal to noise output from a point and shoot camera. The lens in that camera however was never highly regarded for quality compared with other compacts in the same range. That said, F30 had a optical zoom lens, which in compacts are usually not as good as fixed focal length lens.

The old Nokia 808 has a fixed focal length lens that has excellent corner detail, which is surprising for a small optic. The later Nokia 920, 925 and 928 also has a fixed focal length and all have good corner detail. For this reason, I cannot understand why the 1020 cannot continue this trend and also have good corner sharpness.

AndyHWC, stopping down the lens with an aperture may fix this, but the only Nokia I know that had an a drop in aperture ring was the very old N86. Maybe Nokia has to simply add this feature back into the 1020 to resolve this.

Is it possible that the color smearing may be due to the type of sensor technology. The use of BSI type sensors is known to have issues with colors bleeding in between pixels. Could this be the reason the Nokia 1020 applies an abundant amount of edge sharpening in order or mask this flaw?

"Is it possible that the color smearing may be due to the type of sensor technology. The use of BSI type sensors is known to have issues with colors bleeding in between pixels. Could this be the reason the Nokia 1020 applies an abundant amount of edge sharpening in order or mask this flaw?"

Either way - it's not the lens' being soft towards the center (outside the outermost 10% region on the left/right), unlike what Petrogel has stated.

@panoviewsThat android comments sounds very fanboyitic.I guess you phrased it wrong.Cause if android tomorrow drops all the advantages you find on that platform... or if WP suddenly gains it all, why then would android be the decider.

For less than half the price, you can get yourself a Lumia 920, which isn't that far behind in image quality, has the same OIS and night performance, has far better camera app speed, and won't have an unsightly camera hump. The fact that each individual pixel of the 41MP sensor isn't any bigger than your typical 13MP cell phone camera means you can't expect a drastic difference ebetween it and the other cell phone cameras out there. Resampling from a large pool of pixel data has its limitations, especially when so much of it is nothing but noise, and digital zoom is still digital zoom. It's a mild benefit that starts getting noisy and ugly halfway in. There will be more than a couple of new camera focused phones coming out in Sept, to rival or beat the Lumia 1020, while not having to be bogged down by Windows Phone or Nokia's archaic hardware.

" Bogged down by Windows Phone or Nokia's archaic hardware." What are you talking about? WP8 is a sleek and fast OS and is not bogging anyone down. As for "archaic hardware", I guess you're referring to the fact that it doesn't have a 4 or 8 core processor and a terabyte of RAM? Phones are not meant to simulate the expansion of the universe, nor the decay of the nuclear arsenal. Nokia 's hardware is as solid as they come and as fast as they need to be. In fact as an object that you carry with you (which is what is is), they are a hell of a lot more sturdy than the iPhones and the Samsungs. I have the Nokia 820 (WP8) for more than half a year now and it's a sleek machine that has never let me down. Moreover I've dropped it countless times and it barely acquired a scratch. Try dropping an S4 or iPhone on a hard surface. I wish someone was monitoring posts ilke yours which are effectively grossly misleading unsuspecting buyers...

siberstorm27Which one is the best in low light without using flash of 920 and 1020 has probably not been properly tested. The 920 is heavier than 1020. And they have different OIS systems.I bet the 1020 takes better low light images.

No, the digital zoom here is better than what you think of, when you think of digital zoom. It's mosly just a crop of the sensor, meaning that if you zoom in on the full resolution image you have almost the exact same quality.So it's not crop-stretch, its simply crop.With less pixels you could not do that crop, cause the details would not have been captured.

Compared to it's competitors, it apparently captures about as much details in a 5MP image as higher resolution images from others.Why would you want higher resolution images that has no more details? Often that leads to larger file sizes, and that is just unecessary, or at least it's impratical when you look at the pictures as they have to be downsampled even more by your GPUchip,

Sorry to disagree. It's the entire point. There's not much point in taking 41 MP pictures on a mobile device but the Nokia takes those 41MP to produce low-noise 5MP images and allow for high-quality digital zoom. Seems pretty clever to me.

No, the 41 MP sensor in this phone isn't so that you can take 41 MP photos. The entire point was that you can get better 5 MP photos from this camera than the 8 MP camera from an iPhone, a 13 MP photo from an S4, etc.

The ability to keep the 41 MP image from the camera is nice, but not really the point. It's not like the Nikon D800, where your high MP camera is meant for photographers who need 38 (?) MP.

No, the whole point is really that Nokia is actually trying to pass a crappy 5 MP camera off as a 41 MP camera in order to boost sales. Nokia is a so so phone company living in the past, and they have never been known for cameras, and they've combined the two into a phone running one of the least popular phone OSes. Epic fail....

...Nokia is a so so phone company living in the past, and they have never been known for cameras...very strange and inacurate comment. Nokia has been leader in mobile photography in more than ten years. N8, N95, 808PV to name a few.

"No, the whole point is really that Nokia is actually trying to pass a crappy 5 MP camera off as a 41 MP camera in order to boost sales. Nokia is a so so phone company living in the past, and they have never been known for cameras, and they've combined the two into a phone running one of the least popular phone OSes. Epic fail...."

You've certainly forgotten to add the /s sign to tell your readers all this was sarcasm and was in no way meant seriously.

So they can create a review based on 1MP tests - I believe 41MP camera will take great 1MP photos. Sorry guys, but I just can't take that point. They can introduse 200MP and we will still care about 5MP? Not an accurate review for me.

Nothing of the sort, what they have is a 41MP multi aspect sensor.It's quite small, and so are the optics. And it has a filter. So in the end you cant get pixel level 41MP images out of it.

And had it been a 5MP sensor producing those images, it would have been a very good one.I can take pictures at full resolution, and default setting does that + and 5 megapixel one.

A Canon 5dMarkIII captures a resolution way lower than 22.3 megapixels, go check the review. Does it then not have a 22.3 megapixel sensor?Is the lowest resolution in the settings the defining figure, well, most cameras today can capture very low resolution videos, most even less than 720 (1.3MP), are you saying that Canon 5d Mark III only has a crappy 1.3 Megapixel sensor?

808 owners are fragile creatures. They need constant tender lovin' care, being told they are the best, their camera is the best. Those with a little more self-confidence will take these things in stride and move on with the world.

I'm not an 808 owner, lol, just interested in these things. I just call it as I see it, the 808 beats the 1020 in the IQ department pretty easily. Please don't oversimplify the world, although I know it's tempting:)

The 1020 is a device with mass market appeal that is based on Nokias PureView concept.It's not a true sucessor of the oddball, called 808.THen it would have had to been almost as thick, or thicker (with OIS in mind, even despite thinner display and cover glass these days).

Even a lot of 808 users (not that there ever were a lot), would like to get the 1020.SOme of them are not using the 808 as their main device, due to it's odditys.. some never did, some felt they had to move on.

The 1020, although not able to match the IQ of the 808 in all tests, is a much better package.

The 808 was almost more camera then phone... the 1020, is a much better compromise between the two.

And any 808 user that is dissapointed by the image quality, should perhaps realise that the 808 is behind many compact cameras, and if IQ is all they want, they are better off with a good compact and a cheap phone, you might have to use both your jeans pocket, but it will beat the 808 in IQ.

Also add that 90% of the direct camera apps are not recommended on iOS. I've been testing most camera apps on iOS for my ongoing tutorial series and, for each category of shooting, you only need to choose from two (but not more!) third-party apps. For example, with 3rd party pano apps, all you'll need is Autostitch Panorama and DMD Panorama. The rest of pano apps aren't that good as these two. (Microsoft's Photosynth comes close but its output is lower-resolution than the output of these two apps. Finally, Egos Ventures, Inc.'s Cycloramic is prone to abrupt exposure changes.)

Also, Nokia's Pro Camera app itself offers a lot more in a lot of than ANY iOS app simply because the iOS Camera API is very poor and offers no ways of directly setting the

- ISO (other than enabling high ISO on the iPhone 5) - shutter speed (other than letting the iPhone extend it to 1s)- dialed-in focus / exposure (other than setting the POI to focus / meter automatically - but it's still no manual focus)

Agree... how many phone apps do we need to basically do the same thing? Take a photo, make it a bit better and then either send to social app, email or SMS... upload to cloud and delete from phone.. rinse / repeat.

"Agree... how many phone apps do we need to basically do the same thing? Take a photo, make it a bit better and then either send to social app, email or SMS... upload to cloud and delete from phone.. rinse / repeat."

Not many, particularly if the stock apps coming with the device do everything. Unlike on iOS, where not even third-party apps (not ANY of them, "thanks" to Apple's poor API support) give the user the same freedom as the stock apps on the Nokia WP devices.

You are not going to do a lot of editing on a phone either... A tablet aimed for photographers, well, then it would matter... But neither iOS nor Android as far as I know have any good apps for working with raw, so even then this would probably not fallen short in the app selection.

yes, the light source has changed which is why we put this note on the page: "These results are only provisional as the lighting level is the test scene has been adjusted since the other phones were shot. "